Tuesday, June 19, 2018

A
team of astronomers led by Anna Cirulo from the University of
California, Los Angeles, have discovered strange , puffy objects that
look like gas clouds but act like stars. These objects were found by
measuring the wavelengths of light released by these bloated stars using
the W.M. Keck Observatory on Mauna Kea, in Hawaii. Categorized
as G-objects, these stellar objects were first observed back in 2004.
Initially thought to be gas clouds, astronomers realized that they could
not be clouds when two of these objects survived the gravitational pull
of a black hole. Through the discovery of three new G-objects -
G3, G4 and G5 - these researchers have reached the conclusion that
these are bloated stars. These are stars that have become so large that
tidal forces exerted by a black hole can pull matter off of the star,
yet remain contact through a stellar core with a sizable mass. Researchers
believe that G-objects may have formed through the collision of two
stars orbiting each other. "In the aftermath of such a merger, the
resulting single object would be
'puffed up,' or distended, for a rather long period of time, perhaps a
million years, before it settles down and appears like a normal-sized
star,"
said UCLA astronomy professor Mark Morris, a co-principal investigator
of this study.

Article Compiled By: Kyle Tam

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